


Reading Comprehension

by thirty2flavors



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Comedy, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Post-Canon, established (early) relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 09:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11941197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: When a milestone in Rhys and Sasha's new relationship goes, frankly, terribly, Vaughn and Fiona get pulled in for emotional support. Which also goes terribly.





	Reading Comprehension

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on Tumblr: [@oodlyenough](http://oodlyenough.tumblr.com/)

“Statistically speaking, what do you think the odds are of the ground opening up and swallowing me whole?”

“You mean, like, a sinkhole? I dunno, I think it depends on the type of soil. If there was like a series of underground caves, or some mining excavation, or—hang on, why are you asking this?” On the other end of the line, Vaughn’s voice took on a note of panic. “Did you fall in a hole? Are you okay? Are you in a hole right now?”

 _Only of my own making_ , thought Rhys. Palm held aloft to connect the call, he rubbed his eyes with his left thumb and forefinger. 

“No,” he said, “no, I’m not in a hole, I was just—”

“Oh. That’s good.” Vaughn paused. “Did you watch a documentary and develop a weirdly specific fear again?”

“I don’t do that.”

“Yeah you do. Like, remember the time we watched that documentary about that guy who died from drinking too much water, and then—”

“You’re supposed to drink water. How can you die from being _too_ hydrated? That’s messed up. That’s…” Rhys sighed. He let his hand fall from his face, blinking at the ceiling. “That’s really not why I called.” 

“Oh, right, sinkholes.” In the choppy video projected out of Rhys’ palm, Vaughn scratched his head. “Uh, sinkholes? Why were we talking about sinkholes?”

“Because,” said Rhys, “I was doing some wishful thinking, and I figured, if there was ever a planet where the ground would swallow you whole, it’d be Pandora, right? That sounds like a Pandora thing.” 

Predictably, Vaughn—good old, trustworthy, perceptive Vaughn—zeroed in on exactly the one part of that sentence Rhys kind of hoped he might ignore. 

“Wishful thinking? Why were you thinking wishfully of falling in a hole? Dude, what’s going on?”

In response, Rhys groaned and screwed his eyes shut.

This, of course, was precisely why he had called Vaughn—because he wanted sympathy, or wanted to wallow, or at the very least wanted to talk to someone other than his own brain, which had already spent the last half hour convincing him everything was every bit as bad as he thought and then some. 

But faced now with the prospect of having to explain to Vaughn why he wanted sympathetic wallowing, Rhys was beginning to question himself. Avoiding this kind of agony was why he had concocted his original plan of lying in bed and waiting for Pandora to swallow him whole in the first place.

“Bro,” Vaughn prompted again, sounding more concerned this time, “are you okay?”

“Physically, yes. Spiritually?” Rhys tipped his free hand back and forth like a wobbly canoe. “Debatable.” 

Vaughn waited patiently, and Rhys took a deep breath. He’d already jumped off one emotional cliff today and landed in an abyss. While he was there, he might as well report back to the mainland. For posterity.

“Sasha’s here,” he started. “No, actually, correction: Sasha _was_ here.”

* * *

Once you knew which plants were safe, which plants might try to eat you, and which plants _really_ didn’t like to be touched, the jungle in the Atlas biodome was really quite lovely, Sasha thought.

The lush greenery, the vivid colours, the shocking quiet—no skags, or rakks, or psychos—made it unlike anyplace else she’d ever known. For a brief time that first visit, it had been peaceful in a way Sasha had never experienced before. 

Right now, though, not even the pleasant scent of pollen in the air was enough to distract from the feeling that an entire nest of spiderants might hatch in her stomach at any second. Cross-legged beneath one of the less sentient trees, Sasha pulled her knees to her chest and, with no small amount of shame, decided to do what she always did in times of crisis: call Fiona.

“Hey, Fi,” she said as the line connected.

“Sasha?” Somewhere on Fiona’s end of the line, there was a bustle of commotion. “Hey! What’s up?”

“Not much,” said Sasha, wincing at her own pathetic lie. “Just wanted to… check in.” She pulled a broken stick out from under her and stabbed at the ground, digging a little hole. “How’s Sanctuary?”

“Wicked. You’d love it. When are you coming?” 

“Soon, Fi. I just…” 

Fiona’s cheerful voice turned cajoling. “Bring your stupid boyfriend if you have to, but you gotta keep your hands to yourself. I don’t wanna have to throw out any furniture.”

Sasha laughed, the trilling, too-high, well-practiced laugh she’d always reserved for marks, once upon a time. 

That was a mistake.

“What was that?” snapped Fiona, all the teasing in her tone replaced immediately by something sharp and keen. 

Sasha swallowed, then shrugged, even though Fiona couldn’t see it. “Nothing. That was—I laughed, that’s all. _Ha ha, Fi, you’re so funny._ Does no one laugh in Sanctuary? Your Vault Hunter friends too serious?”

“Sasha,” was all Fiona said, a reprimand and an order all at once. Sasha sensed the way Fiona’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

She sighed and let her fake smile deflate. There was never any use lying to Fiona; she was too good at it herself.

“Okay,” Sasha conceded, “I may have a bit of a… situation, right now. With Rhys.” 

Across the line, there was a beat of silence. And then:

“What happened? What did he do?” In record time Fiona had slipped back into the role of big sister. “Do I need to kill him? I’m gonna kill him.” 

“No! No, I don’t want you to kill him, he didn’t do anything wrong, okay? It’s just…”

“Oh, shit, are you pregnant?” 

Sasha snapped the twig she was holding. “Fi!”

“It’s a reasonable question!” There was another pause. “Uh. I think. Actually, don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”

Sasha dug the heel of her hand into her forehead. “Oh my God.” 

“...So that’s a no, right?”

“ _No,_ I’m not pregnant. God.” Eyes squeezed shut, Sasha shook her head, trying to clear away thoughts of that hypothetical crisis so she could focus on the actual crisis at hand instead. Thanks, Fiona. “No. It’s nothing like that. It’s…” She huffed out a sigh and bumped her forehead onto her knees instead. 

The problem with dating Rhys was that Fiona was now simultaneously the first and absolute last person Sasha wanted advice from.

“Come on, sis,” said Fiona, irritation replacing her worry. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

Sasha let out a piteous moan. “Funny you should phrase it that way,” she said, well-aware that her voice had moved up a tick on the scale towards hysteria. “I, um, well. I sort of… well, Rhys, he—and then I kind of—”

“Sasha, I swear to God if you don’t start making sense—” 

“Okay, okay. So. First things first.” Stomach churning unpleasantly, Sasha scrunched up her nose in a wince. “We were… well, we were, you know, _together_ , and—”

Fiona made a strangled noise of revulsion on the other end of the line. “I’d like to remind you, right now, that I’m on a need-to-know basis when it comes to the finer details of your relationship with Rhys, and also that if this crisis involves some sort of… malfunction, let me just say that I—”

“Oh my God, Fiona!” Sasha buried her face in her hands and shook her head back and forth. “How are you making this more embarrassing than it already is?!” 

“I’m just spitballing here! You’re not giving me very much to go on!”

“Well, stop it!” Sasha snapped. “It’s nothing to do with… with… _that_ , okay? It’s…” She groaned. “It’s worse than that.”

“ _Worse?_ What could possibly—”

“He told me he loved me.”

* * *

“She _ran away_?”

Somehow, hearing Vaughn say it felt even worse than when Rhys had lived it a mere thirty minutes ago.

Well. No it didn’t. But it was a close second. 

Rhys answered with a pathetic whine.

“You told her you loved her,” Vaughn repeated, apparently oblivious to the fact that his best friend was emitting a noise like a needy basset hound, “and she ran away?” He scratched his head. (Or at least, Rhys imagined he did; he couldn’t actually see it on account of having the crook of his arm covering his eyes.) “Like, just turned tail and booked it?”

“I believe her exact words were ‘oh’ and ‘I’ll be right back’.” 

Vaughn, to his credit, tried to remain hopeful. “Maybe she had a good reason. Maybe she really had to pee?”

“It was half an hour ago.” Rhys considered, then frowned. “Forty-five minutes, maybe.”

“Maybe… maybe there’s, uh, maybe she got, like, a call, or something, and it’s a secret—”

“Vaughn.”

“—because she’s planning, like, a birthday surprise, right? And so—”

“ _Vaughn_.”

“—so she had to leave, cause otherwise—”

“Vaughn!” snapped Rhys, sharp enough that Vaughn finally took the hint. “I told my girlfriend I loved her, and she said ‘oh’ and left the room and never came back. That’s bad. That’s unequivocally bad. I have spent the last half hour thinking about it, and it’s definitely bad.” 

For a moment, the line went silent. The lead weight that had settled in his stomach when Sasha left felt even heavier now than before. So much for emotional catharsis; now that someone else knew, this was real, and that was even worse.

“Sorry,” said Vaughn eventually, sheepishly. “That’s… that’s rough, buddy.” 

“Rough” was something of an understatement. It was, as far as Rhys could tell, probably the worst thing that had ever happened to anyone in the history of the universe. In spite of Rhys’ best efforts to block out the entire world, the image of Sasha’s awkward grimace as she backed out of his room played on loop in his mind’s eye. 

“Yeah,” was all he said.

* * *

Even Fiona seemed stunned by Sasha’s tale of emotional incompetence. Which, given her own delicate hand with such matters, was quite an accomplishment, really. 

“Oh boy,” she said.

“I know.”

“Sash, that’s…”

“ _I know_.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. This, Sasha knew, was testing the limits of Fiona’s quick thinking in a very specific way little else ever did. She could practically hear the scales in her sister’s mind balancing the odds and outcomes as she weighed each word.

“What did he… say?” Fiona asked eventually, measured and controlled.

“I don’t know,” answered Sasha miserably. “Nothing, I think. I don’t even remember if _I_ said anything. He just—he told me he—well, you know, and then I—I panicked. I just wanted a second to collect myself, but I… kept walking. And now I’m here.”

Fiona hummed attentively. “Where’s ‘here’?”

“The biodome. I like it here. It’s pretty.” 

“How long have you been there?”

“Um… a while.” She cringed. “Half an hour. Maybe longer.”

“Oh boy,” Fiona repeated.

Sasha lifted her head from her knees to stare around the jungle and sigh. “Fi, what do I do?”

“Well, you’ve definitely gotta go talk to Rhys, before he eats all the ice cream on Pandora and drowns in his own tears.”

Sasha’s eyebrows shot up on her forehead and her stomach somersaulted. “You don’t really think he’s _crying_ , do you?” She clamped her free hand over her face. “Oh, God, Fi, I didn’t mean to make him _cry_ , fuck, I—”

“Whoa, okay, for starters, that was hyperbole. Second, Rhys tears up at inspirational coffee commercials, so it wouldn’t exactly be the end of the world.”

Unsurprisingly, that did little to reassure Sasha, who hit her head back against the tree trunk. Amidst the foggy memories of her own panic, she recalled the stunned expression on Rhys’ face as she backed away, guilt doing backflips in her belly.

She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Honest. Everything had just happened so quickly.

“You gotta talk to him, Sash,” said Fiona, a reprimanding Jiminy Cricket. “I mean, unless you’re planning to live in a greenhouse filled with giant man-eating flowers and angry float-y puff balls.”

“I could make it work!” But she sighed, her natural tendency towards self-preservation at war with her shame. How could she face him again now? “What do I say to him, Fi?”

On the other end of the line, she could’ve sworn Fiona sounded the slightest bit amused. “I think that’s something you’ve gotta figure that out for yourself, Sasha.”

* * *

_Talk about it_ , people always said, as though it were the solution to every possible problem.

People were wrong. Talking was totally crap. Rhys had been talking to Vaughn for some time now, and he still wanted Pandora to swallow him whole. Expediently, if possible. 

“You should probably talk to her, bro,” Vaughn had suggested, to which Rhys’ laugh had been harsh and a little unhinged.

“Uh, I can’t talk to her. I don’t think I can look her in the eyes, like, ever again. I can’t look anyone in the eyes ever again. That’s why I need the sinkhole. Keep up, dude.” 

Besides, he thought but didn’t say, what good would talking do? He knew what it meant if you told a girl you loved her and she disappeared immediately. He could read between those lines. He wasn’t a complete idiot. Sasha didn’t need to spell it out for him. 

He wasn’t sure he could take it if she did, anyway. 

“I don’t think cutting yourself off from society is the right move here,” said Vaughn, but what did he know? _He_ wasn’t the one who’d laid his heart out only to have the woman he loved run, literally and metaphorically, in the other direction.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the only course of action.”

“You can’t run Atlas from a hole,” Vaughn pointed out.

“I’ll telecommute. I’ll be distant and mysterious. Like Howard Hughes.”

“Rhys.” Vaughn’s voice had taken on that mother hen quality Rhys associated with unpleasant conversations. “I think you’re losing perspective here. It could be worse.”

Rhys finally uncovered his eyes in order to scowl at Vaughn through the palm display. “Name one way in which this could be worse.”

Vaughn floundered for only a split second. “Well... what about that guy in college? Adam? You dated for like a year, and—”

“—and he was fucking our TA the whole time. Yeah. I recall.” Rhys pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, yes, I suppose technically if Sasha had _also_ been cheating on me, that would be worse.”

“Or Riley from HR? Who turned out to be Max from marketing catfishing you ‘cause you got that promotion.”

Rhys exhaled through gritted teeth. “Oh my God.”

“Ooh, or _Stacey_ —”

“All right, all right, I get it! Everything I touch turns to ash.” He sat up in order to give Vaughn the full force of his glare. “Not sure the parade of failed relationships was helpful, dude.”

“Sorry,” said Vaughn, mollified. “You have dated a _lot_ of assholes.” He thought about it for a second. “Sasha’s kinda off type for you.” 

Rhys groaned, flopping back down onto the bed. Vaughn was right about that; Sasha was unlike anyone else he’d ever been with. Sasha was unlike almost anyone he’d ever known. That was one of the things Rhys liked about her. 

No, scratch that, it was one of the things he _loved_ about her. 

Which, of course, was the entire problem.

“This is the worst pep talk ever,” he said.

“Sorry,” Vaughn repeated, sounding like he meant it. “But you know there’s only one way forward, right?”

“Yeah. The sinkhole. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

“No. You gotta go find Sasha. You gotta talk to her and find out where her head’s at.” When Rhys did nothing but moan, Vaughn continued, “I know it’s probably going to suck, like, a lot. But we’re missing too much information right now, and you two obviously have some wires crossed somewhere, so…” Vaughn shrugged, looking almost as helpless as Rhys felt. “You gotta at least know what went wrong, right?”

Rhys was not entirely sure that was true. His brain was doing just fine coming up with explanations on its own, each more depressing than the last. Given that Sasha was better than him at virtually everything, whatever she came up with was bound to be a doozy. 

With a heavy, long-suffering sigh, Rhys nodded once. “Yeah. Listen, I’ll call you back. Or I’ll… go find a hole, or something. Talk to you later, Vaughn.” 

He closed his palm to disconnect the call before Vaughn could object, then hid his face in both hands. 

Perhaps the most mortifying reality of Rhys’ love life was that every other time—Adam, and Riley-Max, and Stacey, and all the other poor choices he’d made—he’d had an inkling something was wrong, warning signs or gut feelings he’d elected to ignore until they inevitably blew up in his face. 

But things were different with Sasha. There weren’t any red flags he’d cavalierly ignored like a first-time Minesweeper player. He was happy—and more to the point, he was totally, stupidly, embarrassingly smitten. He’d thought she was, too. 

How did he always get it so wrong? 

At least once he talked to Sasha his day officially couldn’t get any worse. Sure, he had to make himself vulnerable again, this time with the foreknowledge it would almost certainly leave him miserable, but it would end there. Probably. Hopefully. Might as well get it over with quickly, like ripping off a bandaid. Or... ripping out all your cybernetics by hand with a shard of glass, as it were.

Rhys shuddered as he threw his legs over the edge of the bed and stood up. Vaughn was right about that, too; he did have a thing for assholes.

* * *

Sasha was on the other side of the door when he opened it, causing them both to jump, and giving Rhys a renewed flash of terror as he wondered if she’d been there the whole time. Had she overheard his entire pathetic phonecall? Was there truly no bottom to the day’s humiliation?

It was hard to tell. Her expression might have been pitying, but since he was having a hard time looking at her directly, he couldn’t be sure.

“Hi,” she said.

“Uh… hey.” Rhys scratched the back of his neck. “I was, uh, just coming to look for you. Thought maybe you got lost or… something...”

He tried to end it with a smile, to show he was joking, but it must have looked more like a grimace, because Sasha frowned in return.

“Yeah,” she said vaguely, “I was just…” 

She trailed off with a shrug. It was remarkable how quickly months worth of familiarity and comfort could be replaced by sheer, excruciating awkwardness. Rhys found himself staring down at his boots and thinking longingly of the sinkhole again.

“Sasha,” he said finally, “I think we need to talk.”

God, was there a more ominous sentence in the English language?

Sasha nodded glumly. “Yeah.” She rubbed the top of her arms, her right shoulder bare without the red hoodie that was lying somewhere on his floor. “Walk with me?”

It seemed clear to Rhys that this request was the latest in their mutual effort to procrastinate the obvious.

He nodded anyway. “Okay.”

* * *

Sasha lead the way in near silence. 

Rhys trailed after her a half-step behind, hands stuffed in his pockets in order to neutralize the temptation to reach for her. He wished he’d known in advance the direction this day was going to take; he’d have spent a lot more of it touching her before he shot himself in the foot.

He also wished she would say something. As little as he wanted to have this conversation, the anticipation was worse. Most likely, she was trying to dream up some way to let him down gently. While he appreciated the thought, her current technique had long since passed “gently” and was approaching water torture.

It was too much. As they rounded the hall toward the biodome, he said, “Sasha, listen, I—”

“Did you mean it?” she asked suddenly, peering up at him over her shoulder. “What you said.”

Rhys blinked at her. For a brief second, he contemplated lying, playing it cool, salvaging a little bit of dignity—

“Yes,” he said, abruptly and honestly. “Of course I did.” 

A look passed over Sasha’s face that was difficult to pinpoint. The corners of her mouth turned up in an almost-smile, but it was quickly replaced by something thoughtful. 

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s… what I thought.” She looked away again, but he could see her frown. “I’m sorry I left like that. That was… I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s okay,” he said, but Sasha looked at him sharply and he flagged. “Well, no. It sucked. But…” 

He gestured uselessly, not really sure how to finish that, but Sasha seemed satisfied. The elevator chimed, Sasha walked out into the foliage, and Rhys’ chest gave a painful squeeze. If her goal in bringing them here had been to look as beautiful as possible while breaking his heart, she was certainly on the right track. 

“I love it in here. The plants, the colours… lots of space to breathe. To run.” She wove down the path. “I always know my exits. That’s something Felix hammered into us. Never go into a room if you don’t know how to leave again. Always know your way out.” She lifted her hands in a shrug. “Course, that’s easier said than done.” She brushed the thought away and turned to face him properly. “What I’m trying to say is: you scared me, so I ran. But that wasn’t fair. I’m sorry, Rhys.”

There was nothing for Rhys to do but nod. His hand twitched in his pocket as he thought, for the dozenth time, of reaching for hers, and he settled instead for rubbing the back of his neck. 

“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” he said. “I... didn’t realize it would.” He mustered a grim smile. “It’s not that unexpected, is it?” 

“I don’t know.” Sasha’s eyes were wide and honest. “I’ve never done this before.”

Rhys’ eyebrows crept up his forehead. “What?”

Sasha looked away again. “I mean, I’ve been with people, just not… you know… for very long. Not unless it was a job.” She hugged her arms around herself. “Fi and I, we always tried not to get very close to anyone. Couldn’t afford to. That was what Felix always said, anyway.”

“Oh,” said Rhys dumbly. “Sasha, I—I didn’t realize. You never said.”

She snorted. “Well, yeah. It’s embarrassing. Besides, I didn’t think...” Still avoiding his eye, Sasha kicked at the dirt with the toe of her shoe. “I don’t expect good things to last very long.” 

It was a weird, seeing Sasha so shy. She was so capable, so experienced, so self-reliant it was easy to forget she was the youngest of them all. 

Rhys sighed. “Look, Sasha, I don’t want to—to rush you, or freak you out, or… whatever.” He waved his hands in an all-encompassing gesture to the air, pushing forward in spite of the anxious thudding of his heart. “If we’re not on exactly the same page yet that’s okay, you know?” He swallowed, his hands hanging limply at his sides. “But I do kind of need to know that we’re at least reading the same book.” 

Sasha watched him closely, biting her bottom lip. He wished he could read her mind, and as the silence stretched on, Rhys itched to fill it. 

Finally she took a breath and spoke. “When August first told me he loved me I said it back right away. I didn’t even think about it.”

Rhys’ interrupting laugh was squeaky and borderline hysterical. God, where was a sinkhole when you needed one? Eyes trained on the ceiling of the dome, he blew out a breath and shook his head. “All right. Okay. Well, that’s—that’s one way to clear that up, I guess.”

Sasha’s fingertips found the crook of his arm, and Rhys, startled, met her eyes. “Will you let me finish, you dork?” 

Her thumb traced the inside of his elbow, and Rhys swallowed around the heart in his throat. “Sorry.”

“It was easy with August,” she continued, her voice and expression gentle, “because I knew what I was supposed to say. What he wanted to hear, what was best for the job. Like I was reading a script.” She dropped her eyes, staring at some spot on the centre of his chest, young and shy again. “I don’t wanna do that with you. I want it to be real.” 

The admission came with some colour in her cheeks, and the vice in Rhys’ chest tightened again, wringing out every ounce of affection until he felt like he was dripping with it. Finally allowing himself to reach for her, he ran his hand from her elbow to her shoulder. Sasha shivered under his touch, biting back a small smile, and Rhys grinned in turn.

“Aw, Sash. That's the cutest thing I've ever heard you say.”

“Don’t make fun,” she muttered, her cheeks flushed even more. Her hands grabbed the front of his shirt, holding him in place. “I know I fucked up today, but I don’t want you to think that I’m… that I don’t…”

She trailed off in a frustrated frown, unable or unwilling to put it into words. Rhys moved his free hand to the small of her back, tugging her forwards. 

“Sasha. Look at me.” When she still didn’t look up, he tapped the underside of her chin with his finger. “This kinda stuff, it’s—it’s scary sometimes. It’s okay.” 

Her fingers curled tighter around his shirt, and her lips cracked into the small smile that made his heart beat doubletime.

“And hey,” said Rhys, with what he hoped was an encouraging smile, “if it makes you feel any better, pretty much all my past relationships were total disasters. So.”

She wrinkled her nose. “So you have bad taste? What does that say about me?”

“Wha—no, that’s not—”

“Why would that make me feel better? At least one of us should know how to do this.”

“Well I was… I was just… trying to empathize.” 

Sasha’s brow furrowed. 

“Look, it just—I’m just saying, you know, Helios wasn’t exactly the healthiest dating environment.”

“Shocking,” she teased. But she shrugged. “Neither was Hollow Point.”

Rhys grinned. “Good thing we found each other, then.”

“Mmm. Good thing.”

Stretching the rest of the distance between them, Sasha kissed him. He locked one arm around her waist to keep her steady, the other hand drifting up her shoulder to cup the back of her neck. As Sasha grazed her teeth along his bottom lip, it occurred to Rhys that this was almost exactly where they’d left off, before he’d thrown a wrench in the works by way of emotional honesty. 

It was incredible how easy it was to forego the whole conversation thing, he thought. 

Rhys broke away, resting his forehead against hers, and Sasha sank back down to her heels. With a last deep breath, he let the anxiety of the last hour come tumbling out. 

“You’re happy, though, right? With… us? I mean, I’m not imagining it? You’re not just humouring me? Cause I don’t want you to humour me. Not with this. Maybe if I was like, ‘hey Sasha, what do you think of this haircut?’, but not—”

“Babe.” Sasha took his face in her hands and pulled back to look at him in the eye. “I don’t humour people.” She smirked. “Even about the haircut. _Especially_ about the haircut.” 

“Well, that was a bad example. My haircuts are great.”

Sasha rolled her eyes. “Sure, babe.”

“See? _Now_ I feel like you’re humouring me.”

But he smiled, and she brushed his cheek with her thumb.

“You wanted to know if we were reading the same book,” she said, gentle and contemplative. “We are.” Her index finger traced the circle of scarred skin around his temple port, sending an indefinable sensation rippling down his spine. Eyes half-shut, he leaned into her hand. “I think we’re probably on the same chapter.” She smiled. “You’re just a faster reader than I am.”

When he recounted this to Vaughn later, Rhys would pretend that he played it cool—that his eyes didn’t widen like saucers, that his face didn’t turn as red as Sasha’s headband, that he said something suaver than a choked-out “For real?”

Sasha laughed, but it was kind, her eyes twinkling in a way that made his heart beat even faster. 

“I like you, Rhys,” she said firmly, holding his face in both hands. “I _really_ like you. You make me laugh, and you surprise me, and I… I feel safe with you.” That last bit, the scariest confession of all, was quieter than the others. She raised her bare shoulder in a shrug. “You’re just gonna have to be patient with me. If you can. Okay?”

Lightheaded with relief and a dozen other things floating around his head, Rhys was sure his answering smile was what some people might describe as delirious. 

“I can do patient,” he said. Sasha raised an eyebrow, and he added, “I mean… okay, historically, patience has not been one of my strengths, but in this case I think I could make an exception.” 

Sasha laced her fingers together behind his neck, smirking playfully. “Glad to hear it.”

She tugged him down and Rhys obliged, pressing a quick kiss to her lips before trailing kisses down to her bare shoulder. Sasha giggled, squirming in his arms and gripping a fistfull of his hair; Rhys nipped at her neck and then blew a raspberry in the hollow of her collarbone, and Sasha laughed outright, clear as a chime in his ear. 

“You’re so embarrassing,” she chided, but he could hear the smile in her voice.

Rhys grinned against her skin. “Want me to stop?”

“Mmm, I didn’t say _that_.” 

So Rhys went back to kissing her, as far down as her sweater would allow, and Sasha gave a pleased hum, running her fingers through his hair and ghosting her thumb over his temple.

“Rhys,” she said after a second, while his hand crept up to pull her sweater further down. “I’m glad we talked.”

“Me too.” He stopped what he was doing only briefly to nuzzle the crook of her neck. “Sinkhole prospects on Pandora are pretty grim.”

Thoroughly distracted by his ministrations, Sasha was slower to parse what he’d said than she otherwise might have been. Then her hands stilled in his hair. “Wait, what?”


End file.
